In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
Fresh from his taboo-shattering withdrawal from Gaza last summer, Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon touched off yet another earthquake this week. The first earthquake, disengagement, began a redrawing of Israel’s geopolitical borders by removing troops and settlers unilaterally from territory first captured in 1967. The second earthquake will redraw the contours of Israeli politics, allowing him…
There are many reasons to applaud this month’s back-to-back speeches by Abe Foxman and Eric Yoffie on the dangers of the religious right, but here’s the most important: They have given voice to something their constituents have been thinking and feeling for a long time. American Jews need a voice that articulates their concerns on…
In 1956, a year after Auschwitz survivor Michael Taffet became an American citizen, the government of Poland nationalized his family’s property in Debica. The seizure was based on a decree issued in 1946 that permitted the government to take property still considered “abandoned” 10 years after the end of World War II. Polish Jews like…
Tibet would seem to have little history in common with Israel. Yet much like Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple, today Tibetans face the daunting task of preserving their religious culture and national dreams while facing an indeterminate exile. The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled political and cultural leader, is well aware of the…
Since independence 58 years ago, Israel’s political system has lacked a true center. This week, Ariel Sharon decided to try to find it, and in the process, rewrite the history of the Jewish state. The prime minister’s jettisoning of his Likud connections is more than just politics become personal on a scale not seen since…
The Israel Labor Party has had these moments before, when a man on horseback arrives to take the fading party by storm and promise it a new lease on life. Two years ago it was Amram Mitzna, the brainy ex-general-turned-mayor who emerged from obscurity to seize the party’s reins and lead it to a disastrous…
I’m not a regular reader of Glamour magazine, but my wife was studying the current volume of that journal when a headline caught my eye: “The Man Who Stole My Life,” a story about hairdresser Kelly Stein. One day a transvestite named Debbie entered Stein’s beauty salon in Greensburg, Pa. “Raised never to judge” other…
Last week Adil al-Zubeidi, a leading defense lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein and his erstwhile political colleagues, was assassinated on the streets of Baghdad. It was the second such killing in less than a month, and it has caused many to question whether the trial can be a fair one. How, more than…
Opinion writer Shulamit Reinharz levels a critique of gender bias at Jack Wertheimer that we find unfounded (“Blaming Women Begets No Babies,” November 4). In the Commentary opinion article to which Reinharz was responding, Wertheimer correctly notes that current low levels of fertility and high levels of intermarriage will shrink the American Jewish population dramatically….
The Hebrew word for “periphery” is “periferiah.” Last week, in the stunning victory of Amir Peretz over Shimon Peres for the chairmanship of the Labor Party — or, as accurately, in the stunning loss of Shimon Peres to Amir Peretz — it was the periferiah that moved to Israel’s center political stage. The biggest revolution…
As President Bush set off this week for an eight-day visit to Asia, his aides were trying to portray the trip as a low-stakes jaunt to show the flag in an important region. Bush was to attend a Pacific Rim summit in Korea, talk business with China, and shore up some friendly relationships in Japan…
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